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Firefox Is Faster Than Safari

Browsers are a bit like religion. They’re all similar, but everyone gets to choose. Our default religion probably is what came with our parents. Our default browser is what came with each Mac.

There might be dozens of browsers available for Mac, iPhone, iPad and everything else, but on macOS Sierra and iOS, Apple’s own Safari rules. For Mac users, Safari is the default browser; fast, with plenty of features, and built-in security options. Firefox 55.x is faster.

Visual vs. Tests

My Mac is graced with half a dozen browsers; Safari, Google Chrome, Mozilla’s Firefox, Vivaldi, Brave, Opera (with free VPN; cool), and others. What I use most is Safari so that puts me in the majority of Mac users.

If religions of the world are something of a smorgasbord of options– between religions and within religions– then browsers are much the same. Each has similar options, each has many differences. For example, Firefox has a distinct look on the Mac, but far more extensions and add-ons than Apple’s default browser.

What about speed?

Speed tests come and go and much of what we use a browser for each day depends as much on the speed of the internet connection as anything. The new Firefox is faster than Safari or Chrome on my Macs and I have the latest versions of all.

How do I know Firefox is fastest?

In the past I would rely on speed tests conducted by other technology websites, or try out a few of the experimental test sites to compare rendering compatibility. In this case, whatever it is that Mozilla is doing to the latest Firefox should be commended because it renders website pages visually faster than Safari or Chrome, neither one of which is considered slow.

It’s also the first web browser to support WebVR standard but that’s more of a futuristic function that won’t mean nearly as much as raw speed in the here and now.

My basic tests were simple. I ran Safari and Firefox side-by-side on my Mac’s screen. Both had caches emptied. Then I entered my test links one-by-one; basically bookmarks to different site but the same on each browser. Safari and Chrome rendered pages about the same speed in a side-by-side test, while Firefox always came up the winner.

The new Firefox was also the winner in battery depletion, beating the previous energy hog, Google, by a mile. They say speed kills. But in the case of Firefox 55.x, speed kills battery life. Of course, that depends somewhat on which websites you visit and how much is going on in the background of each. For example, I opened up all six of the AppleVillagers websites (each does not allow advertising trackers or analytics trackers) and Firefox memory usage dropped like a rock, to less than Safari.

Your mileage may vary, of course, but there is enough going on in Mozilla’s recent Firefox browsers to make me use it more often.

5G? Meh!

About Jeffrey Mincey

As a Mac, Windows, and Linux system administrator in Atlanta, Georgia, I've used Macs for almost 30 years (mostly late at night). Read more of my articles here. Check out my Mac tips, tricks, and app reviews at Bohemian Boomer.